Yeah, I'm not going to talk about specific characters until I'm done, but I will say that this game pretty much irreversibly won me over the moment that:

[spoiler="6/19, I think"]
Morgana turned into a car and I was then allowed to repeatedly suggest his true form is a motor vehicle, and then again when it was revealed that Makoto's persona is Pope Johana possessing a motorcycle.

The other games have nothing on that level of stupid brilliance.
[/spoiler]

[SPOILER]The whole pancake thing was a dead giveaway to me and really annoyed me as I was hoping for something a bit more subtle. Maybe it will end up being a red herring but I doubt it. I just finished the 3rd palace. That boss was super easy.[/SPOILER]

[SPOILER]The whole pancake thing was a dead giveaway to me and really annoyed me as I was hoping for something a bit more subtle. Maybe it will end up being a red herring but I doubt it. I just finished the 3rd palace. That boss was super easy.[/SPOILER][/QUOTE]

I'd generally recommend going P3P->P4G->P5 if you have a PSP or Vita. If you don't, P3/FES's combat system is frankly unplayable after seeing what they did from P4 onwards, so I'd at least try to start there. You're not going to want to go back.

Also, AJ will probably want to fight me over this, but P1 and 2 aren't worth considering until you're already sold on the series, and P3P->P4G->P5 is (so far) increasing order of quality.

I'm willing to fight you on that entire post, IAN. I bought a backwards compatible PS3 specifically so I could play the FES version of P3 again. Gameplay improvements in portable aside, so much was lost with the cutscenes being removed. The art direction is such an essential part of P3 for me that it's a really huge loss. Like, protag's awakening in Portable is downright lame compared to how absolutely badass it was in vanilla/FES.

(Love Portable's soundtrack additions though.)

P3:FES > P4 >= P2 > P3P > P4G sorry. P4G turned into a fanfiction of itself frankly. Like, I enjoyed it a lot, and compared to OTHER games it's **** incredible, but it's not a series highlight IMO.

Or having your party members attack Nyx when he is using Moonless Gown. That said I agree with AJ in that the cutscenes in P3P were just not the same but some of the battle changes borrowed from P4 were nice...it's really hard to choose between the two versions.

Back to P5, [SPOILER]Just completed the Casino Palace and now we are trying to find the keyword for the next palace. If I had anything to gripe about it would be what we were discussing earlier, the traitor was far too easy to figure out. On top of that I felt like the game really pushed you to not get the bad ending. As in you can only get the bad ending if you really try.[/SPOILER]

So our backwards compatible PS3 came in the mail and I opened my copy of P3:FES I have been waiting to re-play for years, only to find that I have apparently been holding on to an empty game case this whole time. The disc was probably in the old PS2 when we got rid of it. RIP me.